EA shares lower, Facebook hold gains after hours

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Shares of Electronic Arts Inc. sagged Friday evening following developments related to a dispute between the videogame publisher and Zynga Inc., while Facebook shares held steady, capping off the best weekly performance since their debut earlier this year.

Stock in EA
EA, -0.25%
shed 1.7% at $14.26 in modest volume. Social-game maker Zynga filed a countersuit against EA to respond to allegations of patent infringement that EA made in its own lawsuit against Zynga last month.

In its filing Friday afternoon with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Zynga says EA “did not invent” the life-simulation genre that includes “The Ville,” which EA claims is a copycat of its popular “Sims” franchise.

Zynga also countersued EA, accusing the videogame publisher of “an anticompetitive and unlawful scheme” to stop it from hiring EA employees. In a brief statement, EA spokesman John Reseburg called Zynga’s efforts “a predictable subterfuge aimed at diverting attention from Zynga’s persistent plagiarism of other artists and studios.”

Shares of Zynga
ZNGA, -2.62%
were lower by 0.3% at $3.17, also in modest volume.

Late-traded Facebook shares
FB, +0.82%
were active with the price up 5 cents to $22.05. The stock finished the day session higher by 6.2%.

For the week, shares of the social-networking company jumped 15.9%, with Wednesday’s session marking their biggest one-day surge after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared in public for the first time since Facebook shares starting trading May 18. Zuckerberg spoke at a TechCrunch conference in San Francisco Tuesday about the company selling ads on mobile platforms.

Elsewhere, evening-traded shares of Apple Inc.
AAPL, +1.72%
rose 0.2% to $692.66. The shares in the regular session hit a high of $696.98 on early signs of robust demand for the iPhone 5, which was unveiled in San Francisco on Wednesday. Read more about Apple in Tech Stocks.

In the day session, U.S. stocks rose and notched a weekly gain in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s pledge for further stimulus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA, -0.05%
rose 54 points, or 0.4%, to 13,593.37. The S&P 500 Index
SPX, +0.01%
advanced 0.4% to 1,465.77 and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP, +0.15%
ended 0.9% higher at 3,183.95.

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